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The more you can do that through algorithmic intelligence, the fewer people you need on the other end, so the lower cost for your consumers.
Pipeline: Lawful intercept is something that we're hearing about lately. Is the increase of visibility of the issue impacting manufacturers of LI solutions?
Oslan: I think we have to look at the issue globally. Very often people focus on the U.S., which is a microcosm of the global telecom space, representing about a third of it. Well, a ton of IP traffic flows through the U.S., but in terms of the number of service providers, globally, it's a very small piece of the overall picture. When you look at intercept, it's just a component of traffic intelligence. Telecommunications has always been considered a critical infrastructure for the operation, protection, and livelihood of a country. The Internet has never really been looked at that way until more recently. People are understanding that the Internet is becoming a new form, and maybe the only form in the long run, of communications. It has to be protected the same way. Globally, people are looking at it in the same way they've always looked at voice intercept. On a global scale, there is growing visibility and growing need for solutions that give governments the capabilities to track down bad guys, put simply. Nobody wants to do intercept. It's expensive. There's no revenue involved. If that can be a part of a system that creates revenue, however, and also protects their network, that's valuable.
Pipeline: How has Lawful Intercept changed over the years as telecom has moved past PSTN?
Oslan: The biggest change, obviously, is that you had to move from being able to intercept voice traffic on a well-defined channel, to intercepting traffic on an IP network, which is much more distributed, sophisticated, and complicated. The systems required to intercept in an IP world are far more complicated. IP traffic doesn't necessarily go down one link. Packets don't necessarily come in order. They're time-stamped. You essentially have to intercept pieces of the call, or email or whatever, and then reconstruct that session and do that all in real time.
Pipeline: I was recently talking to someone else about the topic of network security, and they were talking about the ingenuity of clandestine communications. One example was one member of a terror cell opening a webmail account, writing an email, and saving the email as a draft, but never sending it. Then the other party was able to sign on under that same account, read the message and delete it, all without anyone ever actually sending an email. Is this the sort of thing carriers and government agencies need to be able to confront? |
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In China, a security event is Skype. This is encrypted traffic they can't understand. That's considered a threat to national security. |
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Oslan: That's dead on. Terrorists communicate in draft folders. Address books. If a name changes within an address, that can be a coded message. Webmail is a very easy method because you can go into Hotmail or some other system, start an account, use it once, and then go open another. The sophistication and complexity is much greater. It's a combination of variety and flexibility of the medium.
Pipeline: We've talked a lot about security and LI over the last few years. Where do you see security headed?
Oslan: We feel strongly that it will all be about traffic intelligence. First and foremost you must understand your network and the traffic that is traversing it. Once you understand that, you can decide what you want to do with it. Is it good traffic or bad traffic? In Japan, a security event is spam. They're not very focused on worms or viruses. They're focused on spam. In China, a security event is Skype. This is encrypted traffic they can't understand. That's considered a threat to national security. Pakistan will tell you it's VoIP and email. Remember the caricature of Muhammad and the hullabaloo it caused in the entire Muslim world, particularly in Pakistan? After that, they wanted to monitor all communication. The definition of what security is will absolutely change, and that's defined by the owner of the network. They'll decide what constitutes good traffic or bad traffic, and in the case of bad traffic, they'll decide if they want to block it, reroute it, or intercept it, or what they want to do with it. I think it will be a system-level approach to protecting a network, as opposed to a narrow view.
Pipeline: Is there anything else you'd like to add?
Oslan: Just that the Internet is very global and that the bulk of the activity exists outside the U.S. Two-thirds of our sales are outside of the U.S., with China and India growing and representing a large portion of the world's population.
Pipeline: Thanks for taking the time to speak to us.
Oslan: Likewise. I enjoyed it.
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